


The Team We're Not

by aldiara



Category: Alles was zaehlt
Genre: Alles was zählt - Freeform, Alternate Ending, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All I want is to hurt her, to give back a fraction of the pain she's given me." (An alternate ending to the footstab hilarity of episode 1060.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Team We're Not

I'm still in the changing room when she comes in. These days I usually avoid her but today I can't; the entire Centre's abuzz with people, and all of them mean trouble in one way or another. I can't face Richard's fury, Roman's pride, the other skaters' congratulations. Not right now. Not even Ben, who'll beam at me and pull me close and tell me how fantastic I was. He'd sound all sincere, and for a moment or two, I'd believe him and forget that all the while he was just watching _her_. I can't afford to forget. Not anymore.

She greets me, sits down to undo her skates, talks. About how relieved she is that she got to perform after all. About how scared she was. About how proud my trainer, my husband are of her; how pleased she is. She even congratulates me on my own performance. If she were any other girl – if she were me – these words would be darts, expertly flung at the weakest points of an opponent, deployed to do the greatest damage with the least evidence left behind. Words are weapons, and I recognise a master when I see one.

But she's not. She's just talking; thoughtless, exuberant, so overjoyed about her triumph that for once she doesn't spare the energy to exclude or despise me. Each word is a wasted blade, clumsily propelled by genuine guilelessness. I hate her so much for it. No ambivalent hatred, this; it's physical, like a blockage in my veins that dams my blood to form pulsing clots of loathing, leaving my heart itself drained and cold.

"Thomas," I asked my brother once, after I'd watched him chat up some nerdy little girl at one of my parents' boring summer parties, "what do you do when you like someone?"

He laughed at me – ten years old and so serious about it – from the lofty advantage our three-year age gap gave him. "Aren't you a bit too young to be asking about that?" he teased, tweaking my nose.

I glared at him and he raised his hands, still grinning. "Alright, alright. Talk to them, I guess. See if there's sparks."

"How do I know if there's sparks?"

He shrugged and said, with infuriating certainty, "You'll know."

"Then what?"

He grinned again at that, and leaned close enough for a conspiratorial whisper. "Then you kiss him. And if he's not completely head over heels for you by then, you come tell your big brother, and I'll give him a good thumping."

I've tried. I've tried so hard. Tried to be friendly, available, not too obvious but _there_. Tried not to be jealous over how she took away everything – Tom, Roman, skating, and now Ben. Tried to tell myself maybe it had to be that way – both of us starting out at one end of the pendulum so we could inch our way cautiously towards the middle; to reach an acceptable balance eventually, and from there... but it didn't work. None of it. And now it's over. She's turned me inside out, made an appalling cliché of me, a raging harridan out of my mind with jealousy. So fetching.

She's still prattling on. About how happy she is with her performance. How she'll do even better tomorrow – by which she means, of course, better than me. She even strews in one of her stupid little "yays", as if I can't tell she's pleased unless she makes a specific noise about it. Like a damn cat or something.

Then she says it, out of the blue. "We really are a great team."

I look up at that; stare at her incredulously. Guileless or not, no one can be stupid enough to say something like _that_ , after all that's happened. Not today of all days.

"A great team?" I repeat slowly, feeling the fury rise like bile – fury, and something else. Something desperate and pathetic and hopeless that loosens the clots of hatred in my blood and lets them rush freely through my veins, hot and acidic. She's still breathing hard from her performance, flushed and practically buzzing with excitement.

"Yeah, sure!" she says, smiling at me like she means it, and that's when I lose it.

"I'll give you 'great team'," I snarl, and kiss her. Not the way I imagined, long ago. Not with teasing and flirting and cunning evasion, not like a playful summer dance. Not the nervous inquiry that my clueless brother advised, no _Do you like me?_ or _Is this okay?_ It's a kiss born of all the things that have been churning and festering inside me, and it's entirely a thing of rage. My hands dig into her stupid, silky hair, fingers clawing into the elaborate braids and coils of her updo. All I want is to hurt her, to give back a fraction of the pain she's given me; when she shouldered into my life all thoughtless and dazzling, pretending to befriend me, pretending to care. When she stole every chance I had at making this new life work for me. When she came to my wedding with desperation in her eyes, not for me, but for him.

So I hurt her. I sink my teeth into her soft lower lip; I rip off her stupid silver headband until it dangles around her neck like a noose. I dig my fingernails into the smooth skin at her nape until she flinches. I taste something fruity and milky on her breath, probably one of those smoothies Roman likes to make for her. Her skin is hot and damp from skating, and the tiny groove above her upper lip tastes salty. And when she gasps and her lips open, when my twisting tongue meets hers, I think, for a breathless, dizzy second, that maybe I've been wrong all along, maybe I'm not the only one flaying herself raw with this impossible longing.

Then she stiffens, her palms shoving hard at my shoulders, and everything about her, from her moan into my mouth – so warm and uncontrolled – to the strong muscles of her back under my clawing hand, to the way her lips curl under mine, says _no_. She pushes me back so hard I nearly fall off the bench.

I come away gasping myself, a few long, golden-brown hairs wrapped around my fingers where I've torn them loose from her scalp. My lips are tingling, from the bruising impact and from the taste of her, sweet fruit and salty sweat. She's staring at me wide-eyed, pale under her freckles, and just when I open my mouth to explain, to mock, to dismiss, or perhaps even to plead, she opens hers to scream.

That's when it's really over.


End file.
